Ansari says that although online dating seems interesting, he never did it because he’s famous and afraid of being stalked. Despite his absence from the online dating world, it’s been massively successful. One dating site, OkCupid, “is responsible for around forty thousand dates of new couples of every day. That’s eighty thousand people who are meeting one another for the first time because of this website” (71).

The Rise of Online Dating…

Ansari gives a brief history of online dating. It began in the 1960s when dating services used computers to create algorithms for potential mates based on a client’s personalized questionnaire. However, these services weren’t widely used because few people had personal computers. Instead, classified advertisements in newspapers “were the medium of choice for singles looking for new ways to connect during the 1980s and early 1990s” (72). He gives the anecdote of Ed, a wealthy, adventurous older man who placed a personal ad and found true love. Another precursor to online dating was video dating, which failed but ultimately made the way for Internet dating. Match.com was the first online dating service to allow people to choose each other, rather than relying on algorithms to choose for them.